


Captain America: Infinity... War?

by TaliesinAdair



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Absurdist Humor, Fix-It, Gen, I'm just gonna Deus Ex the entire world kthanxbye, Kinda, M/M, One Shot, Short One Shot, Which is the only reason it has a rating, liberal use of four letter words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 19:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20980805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaliesinAdair/pseuds/TaliesinAdair
Summary: Thanos wants to restore balance to the universe by killing half the people. Steve has other ideas. Steve also has a remarkable ability to make his ideas heard, even in the oddest of situations.Alternatively, Steeb and Borky have a nice time with Some Rocks.





	Captain America: Infinity... War?

**Author's Note:**

> I have subsisted on Cap/Avengers/Stucky fanfic for some time now, so I figured it was about dang time I brought my own offering to the altar. I hope you guys enjoy this goofy little thing I wrote.

A shrill alarm like a cross between a tornado siren and a cat having its nails trimmed started blaring its claxon call in the back of Bucky Barnes’ head. There was only one dire and unfortunately not uncommon catastophe that could be tripping that particular hundred-year-old, well-honed and extensively cultivated instinct: _Steve Rogers was about to do something stupid._

Bucky whipped around, eyes frantically seeking out the boy who’d been giving him ulcers since nineteen-twenty-fucking-three, and zeroed in on him just in time to see him attempt hand-to-hand combat with the very same massive, titan-esque alien with a skin condition who was the cause of this whole mess. Because of course he did. So Bucky did exactly what he’d been doing since Steve picked his first fight, in nineteen-twenty-fucking-three, and hauled ass to provide back up for the precious idiot before he got himself killed. 

Time does not actually slow down in moments of life-or-death crisis and pants-shitting terror. Bucky was deeply familiar with this fact, and sadly had been since well before becoming a regular soldier, much less a Winter one, thanks to the same dumb blond who had been three steps and one good insult from going completely feral for their entire aquaintance. Bucky had gotten very good at running fast enough to overcome the time drag of adrenaline since well before Steve gained the ability to get into a fight without his own lungs trying to kill him. It was only this long practice- combined with being a wildly successful Nazi guinea pig- that allowed him to reach Steve just as he yanked a highly dubious looking glowy red rock from the Gangrene Alien’s Oven Mitt of Doom. To his horror, the rest of the possibly-radioactive crystals flew free of their own accord and leeched onto Steve like a particularly enthusiastic sentient Bedazzling kit, and he went all rainbow-tinted and see-through. Bucky clamped his right arm around his regrettably best friend turned husband’s chest just as he fully vanished, and then everything went horror-kaleidoscope. 

After a sickening moment in which neon-striped reality turned itself inside out and Bucky’s brain attempted to do the same out of warped sympathy, everything stilled and went blessedly dark and quiet. He was wet and smelled salt. Cautious and slow limb-motion experiments revealed that he still had limbs, and even in the same number and configuration that he’d had a few moments ago, and that he appeared to be gently floating a few inches above the pebbly bottom of a shallow body of water. Odd, but he’d woken up in worse places. Bucky opened his eyes, and immediately reevaluated that thought. The sky was orange and purple, and there was nowhere on Earth with a moon that big. Damnit Rogers.

Bucky sighed from the depths of his weary soul and sloshed upright. Steve was doing the same a few feet away, minus the sighing, and also appeared to have all his limbs. “The fuck did you get us into this time, Rogers?” he asked, voice rough and low. 

“Dunno,” Steve said, sounding annoyingly cheerful and popping up to his feet with a splash. “Maybe we should ask them.” 

“Them” was a collection of six brightly colored arcs of light meandering around the two of them in lazy circles.

“YOU WISH TO WIELD THE POWER OF CREATION ITSELF, STEVEN SON OF SARAH,” came the roar of a million voices like the full denizens of Hell screaming all at once from everywhere around them. Bucky’s eye twitched.

“Not particularly,” Steve replied mildly.

The colored lights faltered momentarily. “YOU HAVE ATTEMPTED TO CLAIM THE INFINITY STONES,” they pointed out.

“Oh gosh, no thank you,” Steve said, voice and big blue eyes so sincere that it had to be fake. He even scuffed the toe of one massive combat boot against the floor of the shallow sea in a move that radiated ‘golly gee whizz!’ Bucky’s eye twitched again. The Infinity Stones- for that had to be what the arcs of light were- didn’t seem to know how to respond. “I just don’t want Thanos to murder everybody, is all,” Steve added helpfully.

“AND WHAT WOULD YOU DO INSTEAD?” wailed six thousand church organs, each a sixth of a step off key from the next. Bucky sighed again, and dragged his world-weary bones up out of the glorified puddle soaking his unmentionables. 

“...Not murder everyone?” Steve suggested slowly.

“AND THE BALANCE OF THE UNIVERSE?”

“The universe may be out of balance, I’m not gonna argue that,” Steve said, irritation creeping into his level voice, “but I’m pretty sure genocide on a level uprecedented in the entire history of the goddam universe isn’t actually going to improve that situation.”

“AND WHAT WOULD?” screeched endless hordes of tortured rubber ducks.

“Oh I dunno,” Steve said scathingly. “You six have all the power of creation itself, right? So I don’t suppose you could manage, say, lowering the birthrates of the most overpopulated species and raising those of the environmentally important and endangered ones and giving the universe two generations to correct itself?”

The arcs of light paused in their slow twisting.

“Or maybe doing some sorta universe-wide pollution cleanup program? Establishing sustainable energy? Universal access to education, health care, and birth control? Political reform? I can keep going.”

“He really can,” Bucky contributed.

Bucky didn’t know that the howling of a coalition of Elder Gods with gallstones could sound exasperated, but Steve brought out interesting new sides of all sorts of people. Things. Beings. “YOU CAN EITHER CLAIM THE POWER OF THE INFINITY STONES AND PAY THE PRICE, OR YOU CAN DECLINE AND ALLOW US TO BE RECLAIMED BY ONE WHO HAS.”

‘Well that’s obviously not an option,” Steve said. “What’s the price?”

Bucky didn’t know that the squealing of sixty million hungry newborn pigs could sound gleeful either, but this was truly a day full of surprises. “TO GAIN THAT WHICH YOU SEEK, YOU MUST SACRIFICE THAT WHICH YOU LOVE. A SOUL FOR A SOUL.” Bucky’s eyes locked onto Steve, who seemed to be reaching the same conclusion he was at the same moment. He started to open his mouth.

“Mine,” Bucky cut in desperately. “Take my soul, not his.”

“Absolutely not,” Steve argued hotly. “My deal, my soul.”

“If he’s the one claiming the Stones, then he has to sacrifice a soul he loves, not his own, right? I’m not claiming anything, I’m just conveniently here, ergo, we’re sacrificing my soul,” Bucky said firmly.

“Like Hell am I letting you sacrifice your soul to some idiotic cosmic power that can’t even keep it’s own goddam universe in balance,” Steve growled, propping his fists on his hips and glaring archly in a move he’d learned directly from Sarah Rogers. “No way are they gonna take proper care of a soul.”

“HEY,” whined the idiotic cosmic power.

“Well, where you been the last few millennia, huh?” Steve challenged. “It ain’t like the universe fell all outta balance last week.”

“THAT’S NOT… WE’VE BEEN…”

“Uhuh, sure. And what kinda dumb rule is that, anyway?” Steve asked. “Who’d Thanos sacrifice? Can’t imagine him actually loving anybody.”

“THANOS SACRIFICED HIS DAUGHTER GAMORRA.”

Bucky and Steve both froze with identical expressions of horror. “He _what?”_ Steve sputtered. “And you _accepted that?_ What the fuck kinda love is that? I don’t think you know what love is,” Steve announced, gaining momentum. “You don’t sacrifice the soul of someone you love to gain power! Your own soul, sure, if the cause is worth it, but murdering your own goddamn daughter is a pretty clear indication of a lack of love, pal.”

“IT’S NOT LIKE PEOPLE VOLUNTEER,” shrieked the stolen voices of every banshee in Ireland irritably.

“Hello,” Bucky said, waving a vibranium hand pointedly.

“Seriously?” Steve added, unimpressed. “I can think of, like, fifteen Avengers, minimum, who would volunteer in a heartbeat for something this important.” Bucky furrowed his brow and started muttering under his breath and counting on his fingers. 

“WE ACCEPT YOUR SACRIFICE, JAMES SON OF GEORGE,” the scraping of ten thousand nails on a giant chalkboard interrupted desperately. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THE POWER OF CREATION ITSELF, STEVEN SON OF SARAH?”

“What about Gamorra?” Steve asked shrewdly.

“...WHAT ABOUT HER?”

“Alright listen,” Steve said evenly. “We gotta whole conversation to have here, and if you’re gonna keep tryin’a make my ears bleed, I’m gonna have’ta respond in kind. So quit with the light show and the Hell-chorus and let’s sit down and have a reasonable conversation like adults.”

The lights paused for a moment, and then each slowly coalesced into a vaguely humanoid, faintly glowing, monochromatic form. Steve and Bucky pivoted in time to put their shoulders together and stand facing the six Stone-people. The blue one folded it’s arms. “Better?” it asked archly, in a rude but blessedly normal voice.

“Much, thank you,” Steve responded sweetly. “Now, let’s do some introductions. You know our names, so it’s only fair that you introduce yourselves.” He gestured at the one who’d just spoken. “You’re the Tesseract, right? I think we’ve met.” He held out his hand for a shake and smiled the kind of smile that gave sharks nightmares. Bucky was impressed. He’d have to thank Natashenka for teaching him that one, provided he came out of this with enough soul intact to talk.

The Tesseract slowly reached out it’s amorphous hand-like appendage and somehow made contact with Steve’s hand across several feet of space but without stretching, leaning, or moving closer in any way. Bucky’s brain made a valiant attempt at slapping itself, but Steve’s smile stayed perfectly steady as he shook its hand-thing amicably. “You can call me Space,” the Stone said grudgingly.

“Pleasure to meet you properly,” Steve said cordially. Space took it’s hand back in an equally spatially rude manner.

“And I am the Mind Stone,” said the yellow figure in a vaguely familiar British voice. 

Steve’s face went sour. Sourer. Then he snorted a laugh. “We need to talk about Vis later, actually,” he told the yellow Stone. Right, that’s who’s voice that was. Steve’s not-a-robot-but-more-robot-than-the-Iron-men friend. Who’s head Thanos had just ripped the yellow Stone out of. “Re_mind_ me if I forget,” he added slyly, and Mind didn’t make nearly as much effort not to look amused as Bucky would have expected. Apparently even the universe’s Mind liked puns.

The purple Power Stone was the largest of the figures and the source of the volume behind the screeching of their earlier collective voice, but on it’s own it was just booming and not excruciating. The red Stone didn’t seem interested in maintaining a single form, and instead twisted through a whole spectrum of them; plant, animal, and mineral. It introduced itself as Reality. “And you’ve already met Time, of course,” Reality added, gesturing at the green figure with a furry red paw that then changed into a vine.

“Of course, just a minute ago…” Steve started, then blinked. 

Bucky found that his own memory of being introduced to Time was rather more hazy and green-tinted than he would like as well. Not that he liked any of this. “Cute,” he rasped. Time smiled and bowed extravagantly and with a complex waving of hands like a magician at the end of his set.

That only left the orange figure, who seemed to be the stillest and calmest of the six. “I am the Soul Stone,” it said quietly, and tipped its head slightly. 

“You’re the one trading souls, then?” Steve asked, sounding remarkably non-judgemental. Bucky shot him a look. Yeah, he was definitely up to something. Something more than previously evident, anyway.

“I suppose so,” Soul murmured.

“What happens to them?” Steve asked, still sounding innocent and non-judgemental and, to Bucky’s experienced ears, highly suspect, “The souls that get traded, I mean.”

“They stay here, in my realm, forever,” Soul replied softly. “They are well cared for. We can all feel and hear them.” Bucky found, somewhat to his shock, that he actually maybe believed it. Her? This one seemed almost feminine, somehow. Other than Mind’s stolen voice and Time’s… beard? Yup, Time had started growing a beard since they started talking, just five o’clock shadow really. Besides and even accounting for those, they all seemed entirely genderless, except Soul. Maybe.

“Well, that’s not so bad,” Steve said, looking around at the infinity puddle and uncomfortably orange sky appreciatively. “Alright,” Steve said, in a tone of voice that Bucky had multiple deeply conditioned and wildly conflicting Pavlovian reactions to, “I have a proposition for you.” As he spoke, Steve reach out and gently took Bucky’s hand and gave it two steady, moderately timed squeezes. Bucky, who’d been about to protest on the grounds that anything Steve said in that tone of voice could only lead to really bad plans or phenomenally good sex (the latter being sadly unlikely in this case. Probably. One never really knew, with Steve), froze. That was a code they had accidentally established nearly a century ago- two squeezes (or touches, taps, thumps, whistles, blinks, whatever) for two words: “Trust me.” Steve had never, not once, abused the sanctity of Bucky’s trust. He would never use that code and then do something he didn’t fully believe Bucky would at least be alright with, if not actively approving. The problem was that Steve was also colossally stupid. Bucky ground his teeth in frustration and did exactly what he had done every time Steve had ever employed the ‘trust me’ code. He gave three equally steady and moderately timed squeezes in return - ‘I trust you’- and prepared to be yanked around by the seat of his still-damp pants and do his damnedest to play along. 

“See, here’s the thing,” Steve continued as if their private conversation wasn’t happening, “I still think you shouldn’t have accepted Thanos’s ‘sacrifice’ in the first place. I mean really.” Soul maybe almost smiled? Her/its/their fathomless deep eyes softened, anyway. “And I don’t want power,” Steve continued. “I just want to use this opportunity to protect people, maybe nudge the world into a little better shape for everybody. Then I could retire, honestly. I was planning on it anyway. And I’m not okay with being separated from Bucky. I just got him back, you know? So here’s my proposal. Bucky can stay for my sacrifice, and I’ll stay for Thanos’s, and you give this Gamorra her life back.”

“No,” Bucky said firmly, turning towards Steve, “_Fuck_ no. Steven Grant!”

Steve turned to him as well. “Buck,” he said, softly and far too damn genuinely, “I just want to stay with you. I don’t want to fight anymore. I can do that here as easy as anywhere else, if this is where you are.” He then winked. Twice. The bastard.

Bucky growled and bulled his way up into Steve’s face, then groaned and dropped his head to his shoulder. Steve laced their fingers together and kissed the top of his head. “Fine,” Bucky said quietly. “I just want to be with you too. Okay.” He hoped like Hell that Steve actually had a not-terrible plan, because it absolutely completely one hundred percent wasn’t actually fine.

“Okay,” Steve repeated, then tucked Bucky into his side and turned back to the Stones. “Okay?” he asked Soul. 

“I accept,” they/she/it- fuck it, Bucky was just going to think of her as a she. The rest could continue to be ‘its’ if they weren’t going to give him anything to work with. She said. She seemed pleased. Quietly, motionlessly, fathomlessly pleased, but pleased none-the-less. Well, Steve’s soul was quite the coup.

“Thank you,” Steve said, then grinned and clapped his hands together. “Alright!” he said, horrifyingly chipper, “Now for the real fun! _Logistics!”_ Five of the Stones took on expressions or postures of apprehension, finally realizing that they were maybe in for more than they had realized. A little slow on the uptake, there. Only Soul stayed serene. “So, as I’m sure you’ll all agree, we need to use this moment to truly reroute the major issues going on with the universe for everybody. Now that you guys aren’t _trapped in rocks_ and _tragically unable to do your jobs properly,_ which is clearly what happened, right? It must be?” the Stones gave slow, baffled nods and exchanged wide-eyed, vaguely guilty looks. “Of course it was. Now that that’s all over and done with, I’m sure you’ll be spending lots of time working on all the things then went horribly wrong without you, but I’d really like to touch on just a few major ones right now. You guys probably don’t know everything that needs to be done, what with the whole ‘having been trapped in rocks’ thing, so I can help you work it out! And since I’m _staying for all eternity,_ I can keep helping! Forever!” He grinned a grin that said that, now that you were in his van and tied up and speeding down the interstate, he could stop pretending not to be a serial killer, wasn’t that nice? Bucky kept his own smile as friendly and reasonable as the Winter Soldier could manage, which wasn’t very. He was beginning to suspect that was a good thing. 

“Alright, so first up we need to talk about universal overpopulation! I have thirteen, no, fourteen, plans I think we should implement immediately. First let’s go into the one I already mentioned in depth, and then we can talk about the other thirteen! So we need to develop an equitable and well-planned system for determining how, when, and to whom we’re lowering birth rates. We can’t impinge upon people’s free will, but I think, what with Time being so conveniently able to see the future, we ought to be able to decrease fertility for people who would be shitty parents or who don’t want to be parents at all. Obviously we’ll have to go through all people on a case-by-case basis, and determine if it’s actually better for them to have a child or not, for the child, the parents, and the grand scheme of the universe at large, but you guys shouldn’t have any trouble with that! Now we do need to be really careful with this though, because hypothetical future people don’t deserve to unilaterally not exist on a basis of their hypothetical future parents being shitty, so…” 

Apparently when multidimensional beings made of colored light go pale, they edge toward pastel. Bucky smiled a little wider. 

“Now when I say ‘universal’, I really mean _universal._ None of this ‘universal so long as the government gives us enough funding to get to everybody, but after that there’s a waiting list’ bullcrap…”

“...because it really just seems illogical to be attempting to lower overpopulation and _not_ address outdated sexist political systems that don’t allow women- or people with childbearing capability, regardless of species sex differentials and personal gender identification- to chose not to have children if they don’t want to…”

“...and since homosexual couples don’t usually have children biologically and tend to adopt, that makes for a net positive for everyone…”

By the time Steve got to point nine on his sixteen point list of Ways To Ease Overpopulation (he’d thought of two more while talking through the first eight) several hours had passed, Mind was so pale it was almost white, Time’s beard was three inches long, and Bucky was beginning to think that standing here looking firm and making approving noises in all the right places was probably not entirely necessarily. He could help in other ways. He lay back down in the fifteen inch saltwater puddle that apparently covered the whole (??) of the Soul Realm and went back to floating gently. It was kinda nice, really.

“...because while overpopulation is a major issue, the uneven distribution of wealth absolutely contributes to the global and universal issues of…”  
Bucky sighed and let his eyes drift closed.

“... and frankly overpopulation suddenly becomes a much bigger problem across multiple planets when you have hyper-aggressive imperialistic societies like the Kree ousting entire cultures from their home planets…”

It was almost like a sensory deprivation chamber, but one that didn’t immediately give him claustrophobic cryo-tube flashbacks. He’d been floating for what he judged to be about eleven hours now and he had yet to get pruny. Or tired or hungry, for that matter. The water and air were the perfect temperature, the salinity just high enough that he could float without touching anything, all he could smell was salt water and Steve, and the only sounds were the light swish of waves, Steve, and the somehow always audible sound of the growing despair of his unwilling audience. It was incredibly relaxing. 

“In conclusion, if we address these eighteen main points in a timely and intelligent manner, the overpopulation of humans and similar species across the galaxy should become much more manageable within two to three generations!”

“Oh thank God, are we done?” Space asked desperately.

Steve laughed his best ‘I kill Nazis before breakfast’ laugh. “Of course not, don’t be silly! That’s just one little issue! We need to talk about at least six more!”

“DOES HE NEVER STOP?” came Power’s booming voice. 

Bucky figured that had to be addressed to him, so he opened his eyes to see all five ‘lesser Stones’, as he’d begun to think of them ten hours or so ago, looking down at him in desperate, last-ditch hope. It was incredibly easy to exude Soul’s infinite serenity, as relaxed as he was, and he responded with deep contentment, “Nope. Not in the century people have been tryin’a make him, anyway. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it, what with us stayin’ here with you fellas for all eternity an’ all. Really, I can’t get a decent night sleep anymore without ‘im sleep talking about ‘the violent heteropatriarchy’ an’ ‘equal rights means equal access’ an’ all that all night. Gets too quiet, ya know.” Bucky closed his eyes again and did his best to take a gleeful mental snapshot of the despair on all five faces.

“Guys," Steve said disapprovingly, "surely you're not actually suggesting that should be all we deal with? Everything that's wrong in the world, all the unnecessary pain and suffering and cruelty, what kind of primordial powers would you be if you just… didn't address that?" He gave them his best sincere, heartbreaking puppy dog look. 

The lesser Stones hunched their sort-of shoulders and scuffed their not-really feet, trying and failing to brush off their first taste of Steve's special brand of 'you can be better than this.' Bucky watched with interest. "Of course not, that's…" Space started, and faded to silence. 

"That's exactly what we were thinking," Mind finished weakly. It had stopped mimicking Vision a while back. "Let's keep planning."

"YOU'RE JUST VERY… THOROUGH," Power added.

"Well, of course," Steve said gently. "What if we miss something important, or make a mistake and people suffer for it?" 

"That would be… bad," Reality said haltingly. Steve nodded encouragingly. 

"Right," Steve said, gently nudging them back on course. "I think next we should address raising the population of environmentally key species, don't you?" The Stones nodded slowly. Steve smiled, less sharklike this time, and continued. "Obviously the first step is to determine which species on each individual planet are at that junction of ‘environmentally important and also in danger’. Now, I only know about my planet’s, but some real helpful folks have made a list! And I memorized it, so I can walk you through it real quick! Then we can start talking about all the _other_ planets in the galaxy…”

“Wait, back up,” Bucky said sharply, sitting up for the first time in close to eighteen hours with a slosh. “Did you just say the lesser long-nosed bat is only vulnerable now? Did that change since the last time you recited the Endangered Species list to me?”

“The _last time?”_ Space whispered, horrified.

“Yeah, the changes to agave farming practices really did the trick for them,” Steve said with a smile.

“Awesome,” Bucky responded warmly. “Not words I ever thought I’d say, but way to go, tequila farmers!”

“Right?” Steve laughed.

“Hey, Stevie? Question for ya, while you’re paused anyway?”

“Sure, Buck.”

“This odd little sea thing is actually real nice. Wanna have sex in it?”

“‘Course,” Steve laughed. “I figured we would. We’re gonna be here forever, after all, and I figure with how I been going on and I ain’t even winded, we’re probably gonna have lotsa energy for sex. Figured we’d cover the whole place eventually. ‘Sides, you know I’ll fuck you when and wherever you want, doll.” 

Bucky’s lips curled in the smuggest little smirk he could manage. “Yeah, you’re a real giver like that, honey.” Power was going a little green. Ah, so _that_ was what puce really looked like.

By the time Steve had worked his way through the vital importance of education for everyone (seventeen points), the utter necessity of progress toward true peace and intercooperation (twenty-three points), and the desperate need for a complete switch to sustainable energy sources (a record breaking low of eleven points- “All the technology already exists, so this one’s real easy! We just gotta implement it!”), the Stones were flagging hard. Reality had given up on corporeality completely and chosen instead to become a puddle within the puddle, red twisting listlessly in the water. Thankfully it was too dark and concentrated to really look like blood in the water, and didn’t smell like it at all. Bucky still wasn’t looking at it. Time’s beard had also joined Bucky in the water, now several feet long and swaying gently in the ripples. Space had been floating horizontally in midair for some days now. Two days, twenty-two hours, and eight minutes, apparently, Bucky suddenly remembered Time not actually telling him a second ago. Bucky was growing more and more determined to get Time to actually talk in the moment in which the talking happened, not mysteriously in the past or future. The problem was that he wasn’t completely certain it hadn’t. The memories of the conversations were there, after all.

“We really do need to talk about Vision,” Steve said next. “It ain’t right, how-”

“I can fix him,” Mind interrupted exhaustedly from its slump on a nearby rock. “I can put his mind back together without being dependent on me anymore. And I will, I’ll just do it, you don’t have to convince me.”

“Ya know, I been feeling real blessed, to be makin’ such good friends with such generous and morally upright nebulous universal powers. I’m startin’ to get real glad we’re gonna be spendin’ so much time together,” Steve said affectionately. A hiccuping sob came from the Reality puddle.

“What do you wish to do about Thanos?” Soul murmured, speaking for the first time since she’d accepted Steve’s bargain nearly a week ago. She was the only Stone still calm and unbothered by Steve’s… Steveness. Bucky had long since come to suspect that she had known this was coming.

“So long as he doesn’t have the power to finish his mission, I don’t think we have to do anything about him, really,” Steve said thoughtfully. “Anyway, he may be a homicidal megalomanic, but his reasons for his actions are actually sound. I bet if I explain our solutions to him he’ll be just fine with it.”

“That or the explanation will kill him,” Mind muttered under its breath.

“Hey Stevie? Did you mean what you said, about plannin’ to retire anyway?” Bucky asked. 

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve replied softly, and for the first time since they got here he actually looked a little weary. “I’ve been doin’ all this long enough. I know you like Wakanda, and seein’ as how neither of us are wanted for anything there and nobody can get in without T’Challa’s say-so-”

“Shuri’s,” Bucky interrupted with a smile. “T’Challa may be King, but Shuri runs the place.”

“-without Shuri’s say-so, and it ain’t like they’re gonna extradite us, I figured we’d just stay. Did you know T’Challa offered? Said he was gonna offer you citizenship, which meant me too by extension, so we could just stay. Retire. I could help train the new Avengers and take art classes or something, and you could have your goats, and we could just stay in reserve unless the world absolutely needed us. I guess we’re retiring here instead, and we can’t really be a phone call away for the next alien invasion or whatever, but we can help from here with our new Stone buddies, if the world needs us.”

“What about Captain America?”

“I figure Captain America doesn’t have to be Steve Rogers. It might be time for someone new- somebody actually native to this century- to take up the shield.”

“I’m prouda you, Stevie, that’s real mature and all. Who you givin’ the shield to? Ain’t no way you don’t have a plan,” Bucky replied, smiling up at Steve and nudging the sea floor enough to float over and bump into his shin.

“I was thinking Sam. He’d be about perfect,” Steve grinned, and Bucky laughed so hard he splashed himself in the face and choked on sea water.

“Oh he would be,” he wheezed, once he’d sat up and coughed his lungs clear. “He’s just as much of an overachieving, idealistic, balls-to-the-wall crazy person as you are, he just hides it better. And he’s smart, and damn handy in a fight. That ain’t the main things though, is it?” Steve just grinned. “Yeah,” Bucky continued. “Barely first generation American son of an Irish immigrant single mother who’s gay married to a half-Jewish fella just ain’t controversial enough in this day and age, is it? You about gotta pass it on to an openly bisexual black man.”

“Yeah,” Steve said dreamily, a far away look and small, satisfied smile on his face. “The conservatives are gonna _lose their shit.”_

“And Sammy’ll just smile that ‘I’m a well-adjusted put-together adult’ smile he does and say something glib about how surely they ain’t _racist,”_ Bucky laughed. Steve smiled beatifically. “If we was gonna retire in Wakanda and not here for all eternity,” Bucky added. “We shoulda gotten some dogs.”

“_A_ dog,” Steve immediately countered.

“Five dogs.”

“Buck, that’s ridiculous. We could _maybe_ do two dogs.”

“Six dogs.”

“Two dogs and some fish.”

“Seven dogs and some fish.”

“That ain’t how bartering works, Buck,” Steve tried to scold through his laughter. Bucky grinned at him and leaned a shoulder into his knee.

“You sure? Cuz that’s how you do it,” Mind muttered. They ignored it.

“I will accept three dogs and an as yet undetermined amount of other animals such as fish,” Bucky said, “but that’s the lowest I’ll go. Three dogs is the ideal number for people like us, I did research. You gotta do three, that way when the oldest dies the other two still got each other. And then after the grieving period you can get another puppy and you’re back to three. It’s perfect. I bet we coulda found a couple a dogs in a shelter that nobody wants because they’re not puppies and have to be adopted together, and then once they’re all settled in we can add the third one.”

“Alright Buck,” Steve said fondly. “Three dogs and some fish.”

“And my goats.”

“And your goats. If we was gonna retire to Wakanda, that is,” he added, looking back up to the Stones, who seemed to be grateful for the reprieve. Soul was smiling for real now. “So I know there’s more to cover, all sorts of things really,” Steve said, and Reality sobbed a little again, “and we’ll definitely talk about all that after, but I think we got enough to be goin’ on for the moment, don’t you think? Why don’t we go back to Earth and do all the things we just decided on, and then we can come back here and see what happens and talk it all through again!”

“YES,” Power boomed immediately, “YES, THAT’S ENOUGH FOR NOW, LET’S GO.” Space went incorporeal and swirly again without waiting for a reply, and whirled around the two of them like a tiny blue tornado, rapidly joined by the rest of the rainbow.

Travelling through the nether, or whatever it was, wasn’t any nicer the second time, and once they had settled back into their real bodies Bucky let his forehead thump forward onto Steve’s shoulder and groaned, then remembered that they’d left in the middle of the scariest battle of his very scary-battle-filled life and jerked back upright. He took a step back and to the side so they both could actually stand like normal people, but kept his hand pressed to Steve’s spine between his shoulderblades. Just in case. 

Thanos reeled back as if he’d been socked in the chest and looked from his magical Oven Mitt to Steve with confused horror. Steve was glowing. Not like he always glowed, like he was somehow standing in the best lighting in any room all the time the way he always did, Bucky had realized in the mid-nineteen thirties that that particular phenomenon was a result of his own perceptions and was not actually visible to everyone else; no, Steve was actually glowing. Rainbow glowing, the light of the Stones washing over his skin like soft waves. 

“That’s enough, I think,” he said, the voices of the Stones reverberating through and under his own in a deep and resonant song like a chorus of angels. Real Biblical angels, the glorious and utterly terrifying kind. Bucky could feel that song coming from inside his own chest too, and a quick glance revealed that he was also glowing. Steve and the Stones must be using him to distribute the concentration of power or something. Whatever, it was working. Steve lifted and opened his hands, palms up and held out like he was offering a blessing to the world. The rainbow light of the Stones flowed from his hands out onto the battlefield, across Wakanda, then Africa, then all of Earth, then out into space to wrap like a glowing blanket of warmth and love across every planet in the universe. 

In Kenya, two very confused white rhinos were suddenly surrounded by an entire herd of their equally confused, previously deceased brethren, souls returned from the Beyond and bodies reconstituted from the earth. They were, just for a moment, faintly orange.

A green mist appeared over endless swaths of deforested land across the globe, and they were suddenly not deforested at all, but forested much as they had been fifty, one hundred, two hundred years ago. Exactly as they had been, actually; some older local residents of certain more recently lost forests would soon discover that paths they had walked as children had returned just as they remembered them. Even the ones lost centuries ago would look exactly the same as they once had, if anyone could compare, down to the smallest tendril of the tiniest _Tillandsia usneoides._

Hundreds of thousands of subsistence farmers would find themselves suddenly able to grow enough to not only feed their families, but also sell the excess, thanks to the sudden availability of safe and tested genetically modified crops that were specifically designed for their needs. The agricultural industry as a whole would discover, over the next few years, that they could also grow significantly more food in less space and without the need for nearly so many pesticides and fertilizers. 

Innumerable members of invasive species across the globe found themselves abruptly placed back in their natural habitats. Those with eyes had to blink a blue film from them.

Every nuclear reactor, coal mine, and oil drilling site and pipeline on the planet ceased all function, equipment vanishing to be repurposed where it would do more good and wounds in the earth healing closed. In the same instant, every city, town, village and jurisdiction on the planet spontaneously sprouted at least one wind or solar farm, arc reactor, hydroelectric plant, or other energy source appropriate for their environment, twisting red light shaping metal and wire into new forms. Every motor vehicle, engine, and machine reconfigured itself slightly to run on electricity rather than fossil fuels, and many sprouted solar panels like leaves. Thousands of workers previously toiling in mining and energy industries that no longer existed would find themselves more lucratively employed by brand new corporations with names like ‘Stark Industries Clean Energy’.

Every child on every planet would, when the opaline dust settled, find themselves enrolled in school and in possession of all the time and supplies they needed to attend, regardless of location, wealth, race or gender. Teachers’ salaries in many places abruptly quadrupled. 

Every bit of coral in all the oceans took a simultaneous deep, clean, cool breath.

Deep under Stark Tower, banks of servers that had lain still and silent for far too long whirled to life, sparking yellow.

Every person still alive and considering themselves affiliated in any way with the organization known as Hydra were unceremoniously dumped in The Raft. Every member of Thanos’ army was gently placed back on their home planets (in containment if necessary).

Hundreds of people who did not want children and never would would never deal with menstruation again.

For a brief moment, every mind on the planet saw yellow, and when it cleared they understood exactly what was happening around them and what changes had taken place in their own individual situation, and found they had sudden understanding of concepts and points of view that had eluded them before. Politics were about to become monumentally easier. No one was changed or forced into thinking differently, just given information. The number of scientific breakthroughs that would happen in the following decade would be mind blowing.

A swath of damage cut through the world by the violence of a mad Titan gently reversed itself.

Thousands more changes like these, ranging from almost undetectable to Earth-shattering, gently and carefully and lovingly occurred all across the globe, and every planet in the universe underwent a similar transformation in that same long, prismatic moment. 

On a battlefield in Wakanda, Steve Rogers lowered his hands and smiled. “Okay,” he said softly, feeling more at peace in that moment than he ever had in his long, tumultuous life. The rainbow lights condensed into familiar forms around him and his husband, and Steve nodded to them. “Well done,” he said, and the Stones found themselves actually strangely pleased at the praise. Steve turned to Soul. “Our bargain?” 

Soul inclined her head, and an orange form coalesced beside them, and turned green and red. Gamorra blinked and swayed, then looked around to get her bearings. When her eyes landed on Thanos, she screamed a blood-curdling war cry and ran forward to stab a double ended, jewel encrusted dagger into his jugular. Thanos wheezed in confusion, fell over, and died.

“Huh,” Bucky said. “I guess that saves us an explanation.” Steve nodded agreeably.

“Well,” he said briskly, clapping his hands together, “I guess we better get going back to the Soul Realm then, huh? I was thinking next we could talk about the possibilities for interplanetary trade…”

Soul smiled with genuine fondness, and the other five Stones went pastel again. “You know, no one’s ever volunteered their own souls before,” Time said abruptly and actually in the moment, and Bucky punched the air in triumph. “Certainly not for someone they don’t even know. I really don’t think that’s necessary, do you guys?” The other four shook their heads and head-shapes emphatically.

Steve gave them the big blue eyes. “But what about all the world issues we still have to deal with?”

“We’ll deal with them!” Mind promised hastily. “You’ve showed us the things we didn’t know about, we can take it from here!”

“I’m thinking next Reality and I will reconfigure transportation schemes in most major cities,” Space offered. 

Reality bobbed the top part of its leafy red crown, then turned into a rabbit and said, “I was thinking maglev.” 

“You have not taken anything that you would have to pay for, Steven Grant Rogers,” Soul said softly, and the others fell silent to listen. “In fact, the world owes you a debt. Retire, and live your lives.”

“Thank you,” Steve said genuinely, and Bucky nodded. The Stones dissolved into light once more, and arched up into the sky and vanished. The two stared after them almost fondly, and for a moment everything was still.

“What on _Earth_ just happened?” asked a dignified and very confused British voice, and Steve and Bucky turned to grin at Vision sitting in the dirt, intact and whole and with no Stone in his forehead.

“You’ll catch up,” Steve laughed. Bucky turned to him and punched him on the bicep, supersoldier hard, with his vibranium hand. “Ow! What was that for!”

“Did you seriously just use the ‘trust me’ code to get me to play along when your entire plan was to annoy and guilt them into doing what you want and then letting us go?” Bucky demanded.

“I mean, it’s pretty much always worked for me before,” Steve pointed out, rubbing his shoulder. “As soon as I realized that it was possible to annoy them I figured we were aces.”

“You fucking asshole, I hate you.” Bucky wrapped his arms around Steve and hugged him tightly.

“Love you too, Buck.”

“I have been informed that you would like to accept my offer of citizenship and retire here in Birnin Zana,” T’Challa said, resting a hand warmly on Steve’s shoulder. “And… adopt some dogs?”  
Bucky grinned. “Yeah, if that’s alright by you.”

“It is more than alright, my friend. Shuri will be thrilled.”

Bucky laughed more freely than he had in seventy years. “Let’s find a place within walking distance of her lab,” he said. “She’s gonna be, whatsit she says? Salty? She’s gonna be salty if she doesn’t have easy access to me.”

“That is very true,” T’Challa laughed. “I think we can find you a place, with plenty of room for dogs and goats and stray Avengers.”

“Sounds perfect,” Steve said, lacing his fingers with Bucky’s. 

“So when I said that I bet we could find two dogs that nobody wants because they’re adults and have to be adopted together, I was underselling,” Bucky told his husband conversationally. “Their names are Ingonyama and Ibhere, and they’re at the central shelter in Birnin Zana and I’ve already filled out all the paperwork and everything, we just need to get a place and we can go get ‘em.”

Steve Rogers, briefly Master of the Infinity Stones, former Captain America, now retired and about to acquire two shocking large dogs, grinned, shook his head, and kissed his husband.

**Author's Note:**

> The lesser long-nosed bat actually was removed from the Endangered Species list recently thanks largely to changes in agave farming for tequila. Before, agave was harvested before the plant flowered fully, so the bats were missing out on that food source. It also meant the agave crops were only reproducing asexually and were losing biodiversity, so while harvesting earlier made for better agave in the short term, in the long term it was a lose-lose. Now a lot of agave farmers set aside part of their crop to flower, for both the bats and a more biodiverse future crop. Go tequila farmers! And bat conservationist Rodrigo Medellin!
> 
> On a more somber conservation note, there are, in fact, only two northern white rhinos left in the world. (There are about 20,000 of the southern subspecies still living in the wild, though). Their names are Najin and Fatu, both are females, and they live at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. Unfortunately, neither are capable of natural reproduction, so conservationists are working on figuring out how to do in vitro fertilization on rhinos. They have a GoFundMe. Here's Ol Pejeta's page about them, which has a link to said GoFundMe: https://www.olpejetaconservancy.org/wildlife/rhinos/northern-white-rhinos/
> 
> Bucky has already named his hypothetical and possibly as-yet unborn third dog. Crisp high fives to anyone who can guess what he picked.
> 
> Also, I actually have an Infinity Gauntlet oven mitt. It's a shitty oven mitt, but I like it anyway.


End file.
